


The Liquor Cabinet and a Goodnight

by 3x3



Series: Translations of hydrviolence [4]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: M/M, Underage Drinking, kleinphy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 19:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15274608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3x3/pseuds/3x3
Summary: TW: Underage drinkingTranslation of the fic 洗劫酒柜和晚安





	The Liquor Cabinet and a Goodnight

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [洗劫酒柜和晚安](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13865031) by [hydrviolence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrviolence/pseuds/hydrviolence). 



> I reaaaaally really hope I'm not slandering this piece oof  
> written by the amazing hydrviolence!  
> All tags remained the same

When he’d opened the computer and sunk into his chair, Jared Kleinman had already been a little more than slightly woozy.

The blue-tinted glow of his computer screen reflected off his glasses. Jared bowed his head and played with the glass in his hands. Catching the scent of the alcohol in the glass, seeing the amber-colored liquid sloshing about lightly, he hesitated. He didn’t drink more. He set the glass on the table, next to the computer. Hovering his fingers above the keyboard, he opened his email account.

There were no new replies from Connor Murphy.

* * *

 

Connor was the one who came up with the emailing.

“Why?” Jared had asked back then. He just couldn’t understand why two separate human beings would have the need to write letters to each other.

“I caught my dad checking my email inbox.” Connor had his shoulders slumped, twisting the ring on his finger.

“Wait. Your dad’s checking your inbox, so you decided to write to me, and have me write back?!”

“Precisely.” Connor shrugged. “Another address. He won’t find it. You can write whatever you want.

Even though Jared knew perfectly well that this was an act of defiance against Connor’s father snooping through his mail, not that he genuinely wanted to connect with Jared, he still came up with loads of meaningless crap, weaved out countless lies and jokes. Connor’s replies were always simple, like he never quite knew what he was supposed to respond.

For a period of time, Jared sent Connor a goodnight letter every evening, just for his own amusement. Sometimes scripted with a sugary tone used for coaxing children; sometimes with a random lullaby he’d completely wrecked with his absolute lack of melody; sometimes pretending to be two assassins bidding each other goodnight; sometimes just a string of numbers: counting sheep or other objects he felt like counting; sometimes, when he was feeling an extra dash of audacity, he mixed his messages with sexual innuendos, and bend over laughing while he hit send, suspecting that Connor would get mad at him for sure. Connor only replied with a single word- “Goodnight.”

* * *

 Jared looked over each and every one of those “Goodnight”s.

Now, it really was “Goodnight.” But when it counted most, he hadn’t bid Connor goodnight, neither did Connor, him.

Jared opened up a new message.

“Hey, Connor.” he wrote, letting out a silent sigh. Why the hell was he still writing to Connor?!

“You would not believe how much money we made!!!

“Guess how much?

“Not counting the money I made from selling pins, of course. The pins have your face on them, they didn’t make much.

“At the moment, Alana, Evan, and I, the three of us, are in the middle of executing this incredible, huge dickish plan: raising fifty thousand dollars to rebuild that dumbass orchard you told me about.

“Yup. Fifty thousand. I mean we’re still seventeen thousand dollars short, not that it makes that much of a difference.

“We used you to make us fifty thousand dollars!

“How does that feel like?”

Jared was so drunk he couldn’t control himself properly anymore. He needed more alcohol. He raised his glass and took a sip.

“Hate me now? I imagine you feeling downright _pissed_ about all of this, so pissed that you spring right back to life. This is another thing to set you off.

“You know that I’m the type…...unless you never knew me at all.

“This whole thing, everything, from the pins to the orchard, everything since you died, it’s all one big joke. I’m starting to lose it. A week or two was endurable, but it’s stretched out for too long. Seeing Evan Hansen’s obsession with trees, I just couldn’t help messing around with it. It’d be a crime against humanity _not_ to have a blast about it, right?

“I said that we were friends in those fake emails. Ha!

“Evan Hansen got mad at me as expected.

“You see? It’s always the story closet to the truth that got accepted the least. It’s how the world works. Ridiculous. Correction: Hilariously absurd. I’m part of the joke. I push it forward.

“Come to think of it, maybe we were never friends. Everything we’ve been through were just...another misunderstanding, an illusion.”

He’d written way too much. Jared shut his eyes. Dizziness took over his consciousness, the darkness before his eyes kept spinning and spinning. He reopened his eyes, taking another drink.

“Oh yeah. I’m drinking, by the way.

“My parents are outta town. I get to drink whatever I desire for an entire weekend.

“Remember that other time they were out, and we looted the entire liquor cabinet?”

* * *

They rarely conversed at school, and the same went without saying about hanging out.

It’s less of one of them proposing to deliberately avoid each other at school, and more of… some sort of mutual understanding between them, that made them strangers in the halls.

It felt stupid afterwards. Jared could come up with a good handful of reasons for himself: He didn’t want other people to know about him being friends with the weirdo with a loose screw. He never knew what said weirdo with the loose screw thought about it. Connor never told him why he steered clear of Jared at school. Maybe there was never a reason to begin with. Maybe nothing had any reason to begin with.

It was just… how things were.

They never talked at school, they hung out after class.

It was a weekend much like this one: Jared’s parents were out, the entire house would be empty for the weekend. Jared took Connor home. They could play with whatever they wanted to play with, do whatever they wanted to do.

The ravaged the liquor cabinet, and took a taste of every single type.

Jared threw up. After emptying his stomach into the toilet, he stood up shakily, walking out the wobbling bathroom, and back to his own bedroom. The floor beneath his feet felt like the deck of a ship in a raging storm.

He saw Connor lying sideways on his bed, back pressed against the wall. His eyes were snapped wide open, his gaze hazy and dense. He knew Connor was drunk as well.

“Hey.” Jared started, but couldn’t remember what it was he wanted to say. He forced himself to take a few steps across the still-spinning floor, and got to the bed, letting it slam into him head-first.

_The bed was so soft. The floor was less so. Thankfully it was the bed._ Jared thought to himself, lying on the bed and waiting for the world to settle down. He got to his knees, supporting his weight with his hands, crawling over to Connor on all fours.

In his defensive Jared _had_ tried his best to get his brain in working order. _Should he acutally go through with it?_ The alcohol’s influence was too strong after all, there really wasn’t any point in trying to fight his blurry mind. So he stopped thinking, bent over, and tried to kiss Connor.

Key word: tried. It was honestly just messing around, sloppy and languid. He was so drunk he couldn’t aim properly, and hit Connor’s cheek instead. And then another one on his chin. Then finally getting close to the mouth. He should probably open his eyes to make sure where he’s targeting at, but opening his eyes would make it weird, and his glasses at nudged to a weird angle, squashed against the side of Connor’s face. Its lens are foggy from the heavy breathing. The last remaining bits of Jared’s fluid reasoning finally kicks back into place, reminding him that he hasn’t brushed his teeth yet! He’s just thrown up, and he hasn’t brushed his teeth!

Jared pulls back in a flash, flopping back on the bed.

“Sorry!” He yelped, surprising himself in the process. He opened his eyes, readjusted his glasses and wiped the lens with his fingers.

After the shock of “not brushing his teeth”, he felt much sober than a minute ago.

Connor was still lying on his side. He just looked at Jared, expressionless. Jared wasn’t certain if he was angry at him or not.

“Sorry!” Jared apologized again. They’ve never kissed, or done anything similarly intimate. Sometimes he joked, but they just weren’t… _in that relationship!_ Or at least Connor probably didn’t think they were the type that kissed each other. Shit. Shit shit shit. What was he even doing?! Kissing Connor?! And just after puking! Without brushing his teeth! “Sorry!” Jared repeated once more, feeling an awful whole lot like Evan Hansen. He hoped Connor wasn’t mad at him. “I...was drunk.” He laughed dumbly. “Horribly drunk.” Everyone felt awkward. “I thought we only took a couple of sips. Did we… have a lot?”

Connor didn’t answer, just kept looking at Jared.

Jared was starting to worry that Connor was a step away from kicking him off the bed.

But he didn’t.

Connor didn’t kick him. Connor put his hands on Jared’s shoulders. He leaned in and kissed him, straight on the lips.

And it wasn’t just lame mouth-touching. It was the type you see in movies.

He hasn’t brushed his teeth yet! Jared was internally screaming. But Connor didn’t seem to mind at all, So Jared just forgot about the teeth-brushing.

When the kiss ended, Jared felt a bit out of breath.

“Oh.” He said, lying down, taking in large gulps of air, at a loss of words.

“Just sleep.” Connor said, and shut his eyelids. “Goodnight.”

When Jared awoke again, it was already the next morning. The room spilled with gray-ish morning light. Connor was asleep right in front of him. A hand on his chest, a hand on the sheets.

Jared looked at Connor.

Upon feeling a gaze on him, Connor regained his conscious, and opened his eyes.

In this gentle room with the gentle gray lights, before the day even began, Connor’s gaze was devoid of the numbness, the rage, the insanity people have come to expect. He looked...normal.

Like a normal teenager waking up on a normal morning.

Jared reached for Connor’s hand, and felt the pressure of Connor squeezing right back.

* * *

But where did they go wrong?

They didn’t know.

Maybe there was never a reason to begin with. Maybe nothing had any reason to begin with.

It was just… how things were.

Jared felt a burn in his throat, followed by a sting in his eyes. He took his glasses off, and pressed his palms against his eyelids, forcing his tears back. He’d had too much alcohol. He was too drunk.

“I’m drunk again.”

He wrote.

“I shouldn’t have made fun of your hair that other day. It was just a joke. It wasn’t something to joke about. You got mad. I know.

“Was it because of that?

“Why was it that...you got to, _got to, had to, must, decide to die_?”

He looked at the screen, feeling himself getting drunker by the second. He didn’t really care about what he was writing about anymore.

“I miss you.” He typed out.

He thought about it, then added, “I’m not going to wish you goodnight.”

He sent the letter out and downed the contents of the glass in one gulp. Then he sank back into his chair.

As he waited for a reply, he opened some random websites and put on some music. Then he forgot what he was doing anymore. When he sobered up, the early morning was already brewing. Jared wasn’t sure where the time had gone. What had he been doing for the past couple of hours?

Jared reopened his own letter, frowning at his own sentimental babbles, then he turned his computer off and flopped onto the bed.

“Not going to wish you goodnight.” He muttered, burying his face into the pillow. “Nope.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments to the original Chinese story as well please! Show the original author some love and support!  
> If this wasn't enjoyable then it's all on me oops soooooooorry.  
> More of their work are coming soon hopefully now that it's summer vacation.


End file.
